Bills blows away Seahawks with most impressive win of the season

SEATTLE-The Buffalo Bills have put together some pretty impressive performances in the first half of the season on their way to escaping the AFC East, but with Sunday afternoon’s games in mind, their 31-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks is their best of all.

Defeat dolphin brat After they lost Tua TagovailoaThen crushing the hapless Jaguars AND Titans they were smart in their own way, but Seahawks – as inconsistent as they are – they started the day leading the NFC West, had a 20-point win over a decent Falcons team on the road, and have a stable of big players on both sides of the ball.

So for the Bills to come out at Lumen Field, always a tough place for road teams, and then flog the Seahawks like that was amazing.

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“We knew it was going to be a tough, tough game and it was,” coach Sean McDermott said. We knew we would have to play well in all three phases and I think we did enough to get the result we expected.

Who knows how much more lopsided it would have been had the Bills not committed so many penalties, several of which wiped out nice offensive plays, prompting McDermott to add: “Again, there are certainly things we need to improve – pre-snap penalties and penalties in in general, and then just make decisions.”

Josh Allen came out firing and put on quite a show FOX analyst Tom Brady in the broadcast boothand James Cook ran not only elusive, but decisive, en route to the third 100-yard game of his career, also scoring two touchdowns.

Meanwhile, Buffalo’s defense made life miserable for Seattle’s Geno Smith, who clearly missed injured winger DK Metcalf. Smith started the day as the NFL’s leading passer, but had just 123 yards after three quarters and had a ton of crap as the Bills extended their lead to 31-3 with 11:19 left in the game.

“It’s true,” Allen said when asked if it was Buffalo’s best performance. “I think you look at it from all three phases. I think everyone came out on the field, knew their job and did it at a high level – offense, defense and special teams. We’ll watch this one, get rid of it, and enjoy our plane ride.

Here are some of my observations:

Josh Allen’s streak of no interceptions is over

Early in the season, Allen completed 203 consecutive passes without an interception until early in the second quarter when he simply threw one to his right to get Josh Jobe in the lineup while attempting to quickly hit Amari Cooper. The streak totaled 300 passing yards, starting in the regular-season finale in Miami last year and included two playoff games.

However, after Jobe returned the pick to the 7-yard line, one of the biggest moments of the game occurred that tipped the balance in Buffalo’s favor for the rest of the afternoon.

The Seahawks picked off Kenneth Walker for three yards, then Zach Charbonnet for three yards, putting the ball on the 1, and on third down, Dorian Williams and Greg Rousseau stuffed Walker for no gain.

Here, Seattle went for the tying touchdown, but Smith tripped on the center’s foot, fell to the ground, and Rousseau touched him at the 7 for a big turnover on downs.

“Huge,” Allen said. “I hate throwing turnovers, but I made a tackle. Coach talks about it all the time, something along the lines of keeping your head down, attacking and letting the defense get back on the field because you never know what’s going to happen. They went onto the field and played four consecutive games without a break.

From that point on, the Bills gained 93 yards in 12 plays to take a 14-3 lead, which of course was a shocking change in the game’s script.

Allen was great as he completed 24 of 34 for 283 yards and two TDs on a rainy day. one for Keon Coleman (five catches, 70 yards) and one for Dalton Kincaid (4-31).

Khalil Shakir becomes a star

Shakir is extremely important to the Bills’ passing game, so much so that he is an irreplaceable player. Just look at how badly Allen struggled in the game Shakir missed in Houston. Without his most reliable receiver, he had one of the worst games of his career when he completed just 9 of 30 passes.

An easy comparison in the context of recent Bills history. Shakir was the new Cole Beasley, a small, quick attacker who just knew how to get open, especially against zone coverage.

But here’s the difference: Beasley made catches and then was unable to rack up yards after the catch because he often went down on first contact. Shakir catches the ball and is able to evade attackers or bounce off first touch to gain extra distance.

Part of this can be attributed to Allen’s improved ball placement. This wasn’t the Allens’ strong suit when Beasley was here, but now he’s much better at getting receivers the ball in places where they can do something with it in their hands, and Shakir is the best on the team at taking advantage of it.

“Cole was a phenomenal player in his own right,” McDermott said. “He did a lot of great things for this team. Khalil is his own player. What you’ve seen over the last few weeks from Khalil is that he’s been playing with an injury and finally, this week, I think he’s started to get back to closer to 100 percent.

He had two catches for 17 yards on the Bills’ first TD drive, then two catches for 24 yards on the Bills’ second TD drive. After catching and running for 35 yards early in the third quarter to help Tyler Bass take a 17-3 field goal lead, he had seven catches on seven targets for 93 yards and finished the day with nine for 107 yards. The only target he missed came in the fourth quarter, and that was because the pass was deflected at the line of scrimmage.

The Bills overcame sloppy play

The Bills won this game despite themselves. It was a dumpster fire in the penalty area, especially in the attacking line.

Alec Anderson called, David Edwards had a false start, and Connor McGovern had a catch, all on the first play of the game, and yet the Bills still found a way to drive 91 yards and score the ball late in the zone. Later in the first quarter, Dion Dawkins had a false start and had another false start in the fourth.

On the first possession of the third quarter, Spencer Brown received a first-down holding penalty, which was later overturned due to a fourth down. And then on Seattle’s first third-and-goal, they would face a quick third-and-10, but Christian Benford gifted them a first down with an illegal contact penalty.

“We managed to move the ball, shoot, defend, but again we were killing ourselves with penalties,” Edwards said. “That’s one thing we need to really sort out if we want to be the team we want to be.”

By the end of the game, the Bills were flagged 13 times for 85 yards. Not that the Seahawks were much better, as referee Ron Torbert’s crew was on them as well, recording 11 of 82 yards. This excludes several situations where penalties balanced each other. The total of 24 penalties was the most in the league this year. The previous high was 22 points in the Bills-Jets game three weeks ago.

This was one of those NFL games where the referees simply play too much of a role in the game. Sure, some of the calls definitely resulted in penalties, but there was also plenty of shady stuff that messes up the NFL every week.

Austin Johnson’s interception was huge

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Defensive tackle Austin Johnson made an interception. Yes, it was pretty crazy, and not surprisingly, it was the first game of his career for the eighth-year veteran – his 123rd in the NFL.

“It’s a great time to cross this off the list,” Johnson said. “In college, I had opportunities to score a touchdown and score, but I never threw an interception, so that was cool.”

The Seahawks went on the offensive midway through the third quarter, trailing just 17-3 and trying to get within one score. Smith dropped to pass but was immediately put under pressure by AJ Epenesa on the left. He tried to get rid of the ball with a throw to the middle of the field intended for Kenneth Walker, but Casey Toohill tipped the ball, which hit Johnson squarely in the stomach, thwarting Seattle’s attempt to get back into the game.

Asked what he was thinking as the ball suddenly came towards him, Johnson laughed and said, “Catch it! When you get opportunities like this, you definitely have to take advantage of them. If there was no one in front of me, I would run away. … If you have a lot of people around you and the offense is rolling and they’re doing an amazing job as they are, I just try to get the ball back to the offense and let them continue to do what they have to do. They had an amazing day.”

The Bills took possession at 49-59 with 5:59 left, and four minutes later, Cook ran down the left side of the field for a two-yard touchdown and the game was virtually over with the score 24-3.

The Bills defense muted Kenneth Walker

Without Metcalf, the Seahawks wanted Walker to start the running game because he is one of the best in the NFL and has the kind of speed to the edge that could provide the Bills’ defense while playing without linebacker Terrel Bernard.

But Walker was never a factor. He was stuffed on two important plays near the goal line and was barely involved after that. He finished with 12 yards on nine carries. It was the second-lowest mark of his 36-game NFL career.

“Really good running back,” McDermott said. “He likes to get out there and you could see when he wasn’t in the team for two or three games… you could see the difference in their offense. So we knew they were going to challenge the line of scrimmage and they did that early, and we were able to suppress it a little bit, which helped make them more one-dimensional.”

It was by far the Bills’ best defensive performance of the season, as Seattle finished the game with just 32 yards on 17 attempts, 16 of which came on Smith’s five attempts.

Sal Maiorana has been with the Buffalo Bills for forty years, including 35 years as a full-time beat writer for D&C, and has written numerous books about the team’s history. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @salmaiorana.